Ophiolatreia Part 2

"I invoke thee, oh Protogones, two-fold, great, wandering through the ether; Egg-Born rejoicing in thy golden wings; Bull-faced, the Generator of the blessed and of mortal men; The much-renowned Light, the far celebrated Ericapaeus; Ineffable, occult, impetuous all-glittering strength; Who scatterest the twilight cloud of darkness from the eyes, And roam'st through the world upon the flight of thy wings, Bringing forth the brilliant and all-pure light; wherefore I invoke thee, as Phanes, As Priapus the King, and as the dark-faced splendour,-- Come, thou blessed being, full of Metis (wisdom) and generation, come in joy To thy sacred, ever-varying mysteries."

We have, according to these early notions, the egg representing Being simply; Chaos, the great void from which, by the will of the superlative Unity, proceeds the generative or creative influence, designated among the Greeks as "Phanes," "Golden-pinioned Love," "The Universal Father,"

"Egg-born Protogones" (the latter Zeus or Jupiter); in India as "Brahma,"

the "Great Parent of Rational Creatures," the "Father of the Universe;"

and in Egypt as "Ptha," the "Universal Creator."

The Chinese, whose religious conceptions correspond generally with those of India, entertained similar notions of the origin of things. They set forth that Chaos, before the creation, existed in the form of a vast egg, in which was contained the principles of all things. Its vivification, among them also, const.i.tuted the act of creation.

According to this and other authorities, the vivification of the Mundane Egg is allegorically represented in the temple of Daibod, in j.a.pan, by a nest egg, which is shown floating in an expanse of waters against which a bull (everywhere an emblem of generative energy, and prolific heat, the Sun) is striking with his horns.

"Near Lemisso, in the Island of Cyprus, is still to be seen a gigantic egg-shaped vase, which is supposed to represent the Mundane or Orphic Egg.

It is of stone, and measures thirty feet in circ.u.mference. Upon one side, in a semi-circular niche, is sculptured a bull, the emblem of productive energy. This figure is understood to signify the Tauric constellation, "The Stars of Abundance," with the heliacal or cosmical rising of which was connected the return of the mystic reinvigorating principle of animal fecundity."[6]

In the opinions above mentioned, many other nations of the ancient world, the Egyptians, the a.s.syrians, the Phoenicians, and the Indo-Scythiac nations of Europe partic.i.p.ated. They not only supported the propriety of the allegory, says Maurice, from the perfection of its external form, but fancifully extended the allusion to its interior composition, comparing the pure white sh.e.l.l to the fair expanse of heaven; the fluid, transparent white, to the circ.u.mambient air, and the more solid yolk to the central earth.

Even the Polynesians entertained the same general notions. The tradition of the Sandwich Islanders is that a bird (with them it is an emblem of Deity) laid an egg upon the waters which burst of itself and produced the Islands.

The great hemaphrodite first principle in its character of Unity, the Supreme Monad, the highest conception of Divinity was denominated Kneph or Cnuphis among the Egyptians. According to Plutarch this G.o.d was without beginning and without end, the One, uncreated and eternal, above all, and comprehending all. And as Brahm, "the Self-existent Incorruptible" Unity of the Hindus, by direction of His energetic will upon the expanse of chaos, "with a thought" (say Menu) produced a "golden egg blazing like a thousand stars" from which sprung Brahma, the Creator; so according to the mystagogues, Kneph, the Unity of Egypt, was represented as a serpent thrusting from his mouth an egg, from which proceeds the divinity _Phtha_, the active creative power, equivalent in all his attributes to the Indian Brahma.

That Kneph was symbolized by the ancient Egyptians under the form of a serpent is well known. It is not, however, so well established that the act of creation was allegorically represented in Egypt by the symbolic serpent thrusting from its mouth an egg, although no doubt of the fact seems to have been entertained by the various authors who have hitherto written on the Cosmogony and Mythology of the primitive nations of the East. With the view of ascertaining what new light has been thrown upon the subject by the investigations of the indefatigable Champollion and his followers--whose researches among the monuments and records of Ancient Egypt have been attended with most remarkable results--the following inquiries were addressed to Mr. G. R. Gliddon (U.S. Consul at Cairo), a gentleman distinguished for his acquaintance with Egyptian science, and his zeal in disseminating information on a subject too little understood:--

"Do the serpent and the egg, separate or in combination, occur among the Egyptian symbols and if they occur what significance seem to have been a.s.signed them? Was the serpent in any way a.s.sociated with the wors.h.i.+p of the sun or the kindred wors.h.i.+p of the Phallus?"

To these inquiries Mr. Gliddon replied as follows:--"In respect to your first inquiry; I concede at once that the general view of the Greco-Roman antiquity, the oriental traditions collected, often indiscriminately, by the Fathers and the concurring suffrages of all occidental Mythologists, attribute the compound symbol of the Serpent combined with the Mundane Egg to the Egyptians. Modern criticism however, coupled with the application of the tests furnished by Champollion le-Jeune and his followers since 1827 to the hieroglyphics of Egypt, has recognised so many exotic fables and so much real ignorance of Egyptology in the accounts concerning that mystified country, handed down to us from the schools of Alexandria and Byzantium, that at the present hour science treads doubtingly, where but a few years ago it was fas.h.i.+onable to make the most sweeping a.s.sertions; and we now hesitate before qualifying, as Egyptian in origin, ideas that belong to the Mythologies of other eastern nations. Cla.s.sical authority, correct enough when treating on the philosophy and speculative theories of Ptolemaic and Roman Alexandria, is generally at fault when in respect to questions belonging to anterior or Pharaonic times. Whatever we derive through the medium of the Alexandrines, and especially through their successors, the Gnostics, must by the Archaeologist be received with suspicion.

After this, you will not be surprised if I express doubts as to existence of the myth of the Serpent and Egg in the Cosmogony of the early Egyptians. It is lamentably true that, owing to twenty centuries of destruction, so fearfully wrought out by Mohammed Ali, we do not up to this day possess one t.i.the of the monuments or papyri bequeathed to posterity by the recording genius of the Khime. It is possible that this myth may have been contained in the vast amount of hieroglyphical literature now lost to us. But the fact that in no instance whatever, amid the myriads of inscribed or sculptured doc.u.ments extant, does the symbol of the Serpent and the Egg occur, militates against the a.s.sumption of this, perhaps Phoenician myth, as originally Egyptian. "The wors.h.i.+p of the Serpent," observes Ampere, "by the Ophites may certainly have a real connection with the choice of the Egyptian symbol by which Divinity is designated in the paintings and hieroglyphics, and which is the Serpent Uraeus (Basilisk royal, of the Greeks, the seraph set up by Moses. Se Ra Ph is the singular of seraphim, meaning Semitice, splendour, fire, light; emblematic of the fiery disk of the sun and which, under the name of Nehushtan--"Serpent Dragon"--was broken up by the reforming Hezekiah. 2 Kings, 18, 4); or with the serpent with wings and feet, which we see represented in the Funeral Rituals; but the serpent is everywhere in the Mythologies and Cosmogonies of the East, and we cannot be a.s.sured that the serpent of the Ophites (any more than that emitting or encircling the Mundane Egg) was Egyptian rather than Jewish, Persian, or Hindustanee."

"No serpents found in the hieroglyphics bear, so far as I can perceive, any direct relation to the Ouine Myth, nor have Egyptian Eggs any direct connection with the Cosmogonical Serpent. The egg, under certain conditions, seems to denote the idea of a human body. It is also used as a phonetic sign =S=, and when combined with =T=, is the determinative of the feminine gender; in which sense exclusively it is sometimes placed close to a serpent in hieroglyphical legends."

"My doubts apply in attempting to give a specific answer to your specific question; _i.e._, the direct connection, in Egyptian Mythology, of the Serpent and the Cosmogonical Egg. In the "Book of the Dead," according to a MS. translation favoured me by the erudite Egyptologist, Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, allusion is made to the "great mundane egg" addressed by the deceased, which seems to refer to the winds or the atmosphere--again the deceased exclaims 'I have raised myself up in the form of the great Hawk which comes out of the Egg (_i.e._, the Sun).'

"I do not here perceive any immediate allusion to the duplex emblem of the egg combined with the serpent, the subject of your query.

"Yet a reservation must be made in behalf of your very consistent hypothesis--supported, as I allow, by all oriental and cla.s.sical authority, if not possibly by the Egyptian doc.u.ments yet undeciphered--which hypothesis is Euclidean. 'Things which are equal to the same are equal to one another.' Now if the 'Mundane Egg' be in the papyric rituals the equivalent to Sun and that by other hieroglyphical texts we prove the Sun to be, in Egypt as elsewhere, symbolized by the figure of a Serpent, does not the 'ultima ratio' resolve both emblems into one? Your grasp of this Old and New World Question renders it superfluous that I should now posit the syllogism. I content myself by referring you to the best of authorities. One point alone is what I would venture to suggest to your philosophical ac.u.men, in respect to ancient 'parallelisms'

between the metaphysical conceptions of radically distinct nations (if you please 'species' of mankind, at geographically different centres of _origins_, compelled of necessity in ages anterior to alphabetical record to express their ideas by pictures, figurative or symbolical). It is that man's mind has always conceived, everywhere in the same method, everything that relates to him; because the inability, in which his intelligence is circ.u.mscribed, to figure to his mind's eye existence distinct from his own, constrains him to devolve, in the pictorial or sculptural delineation of his thoughts, within the same circle of ideas; and, ergo, the figurative representative of his ideas must ever be, in all ages and countries, the reflex of the same hypotheses, material or physical. May not the emblem of the Serpent and Egg, as well in the New as in the Old World, have originated from a similar organic law without thereby establis.h.i.+ng intercourse? Is not your serpent a "rattlesnake" and, ergo, purely American? Are not Egyptian Serpents all purely Nilotic? The metaphysical idea of the Cosmogonical Serpent may be one and the same; but does not the zoological diversity of representation prove that America, three thousand years ago, could have no possible intercourse with Egypt, Phoenicia, or _vice versa_?

"Such being the only values attached to Serpents and eggs in Egyptian hieroglyphics it is arduous to speculate whether an esoteric significance did or did not exist between those emblems in the, to us, unknown Cosmogony of the Theban and Memphite Colleges. I, too, could derive inferences and deduce a.n.a.logies between the attributes of the G.o.d Knuphis, or the G.o.d Ptha, and the 'Mundane Egg' recorded by Eusebius, Jamblichus, and a wilderness of cla.s.sical authorities, but I fear with no very satisfactory result. It is, however, due to Mr. Bonomi, to cite his language on this subject. Speaking of the colossal statue of Rameses Sesostris at Metraheni, in a paper read before the Royal Society of Literature, London, June, 1845, he observes, 'There is one more consideration connected with the hieroglyphics of the great oval of the belt, though not affecting the preceding argument; it is the oval or egg which occurs between the figure of Ptha and the staff of which the usual signification is Son or Child, but which by a kind of two-fold meaning, common in the details of sculpture of this period (the 18th or 19th Dynasty, say B.C. 1500 or 1200), I am inclined to believe refers also to the myth or doctrine preserved in the writings of the Greek authors, as belonging to Vulcan and said to be derived from Egypt, viz., the doctrine of the Mundane Egg. Now, although in no Egyptian sculpture of the remote period of this statue has there been found any allusion to this doctrine, it is most distinctly hinted at in one of the age of the Ptolomies; and I am inclined to think it was imported from the East by Sesostris, where, in confirmation of its existence at a very remote period. I would quote the existence of those egg-shaped basaltic stones, embossed with various devices and covered with cuneatic inscriptions, which are brought from some of the ancient cities of Mesopotamia.

"In respect to your final inquiry, I may observe that I can produce nothing from the hieroglyphics to connect, directly, Phallic Wors.h.i.+p with the solar emblem of the Serpent. In Semitic tongues, the same root signifies Serpent and Phallus; both in different senses are solar emblems."

In the Orphic Theogony a similar origin is ascribed to the egg, from which springs "the Egg-born Protogones," the Greek counterpart of the Egyptian Phtha. The egg in this instance also proceeds from the pre-eminent Unity, the Serpent G.o.d, the "Incomparable Cronus," or Hercules. (Bryant, quoting Athenagoras, observes--"Hercules was esteemed the chief G.o.d, the same as Cronus, and was said to have produced the Mundane Egg. He is represented in the Orphic Theology, under the mixed symbol of a lion and a serpent, and sometimes of a serpent only.")

Cronus was originally esteemed the Supreme, as is manifest from his being called Il or Ilus, which is the same with the Hebrew El and, according to St. Jerome, one of the ten names of G.o.d. Damascius, in the life of Isidorus, mentions distinctly that Cronus was wors.h.i.+pped under the name of El, who, according to Sanchoniathon, had no one superior or antecedent to himself.

Brahm, Cronus, and Kneph each represented the mystical union of the reciprocal or active and pa.s.sive principles. Most, if not all, the primitive nations recognised this Supreme Unity, although they did not all a.s.sign him a name. He was the Creator of G.o.ds, who were the Demiurgs of the Universe, the creators of all rational beings, angels and men, and the architects of the world.

The early writers exhaust language in endeavours to express the lofty character and attributes, and the superlative power and dignity of this great Unity, the highest conception of which man is capable. He is spoken of in the sacred book of the Hindus as the "Almighty, infinite, eternal, incomprehensible, self-existent Being; he who see everything, though never seen; he who is not to be compa.s.sed by description; he from whom the universe proceeds; who reigns supreme, the light of all lights; whose power is too infinite to be imagined; is Brahm, the One Being, True and Unknown."[7]

The supreme G.o.d of G.o.ds of the Hindus was less frequently expressed by the name Brahm than by the mystical syllable =O'M=, which corresponded to the Hebrew Jehovah. Strange as the remark may seem to most minds, it is nevertheless true, that the fundamental principles of the Hindu religion were those of pure Monotheism, the wors.h.i.+p of one supreme and only G.o.d.

Brahm was regarded as too mighty to be named; and, while his symbolized or personified attributes were adored in gorgeous temples, not one was erected to him. The holiest verse of the Vedas is paraphrased as follows:

"Perfect truth; perfect happiness; without equal; immortal; absolute unity; whom neither speech can describe nor mind comprehend; all-pervading; all-transcending; delighted by his own boundless intelligence, not limited by s.p.a.ce or time; without feet, moving swiftly; without hands, grasping all worlds; without ears, all-hearing, understanding all; without cause, the first of all causes; all-ruling; all-powerful; the Creator, Preserver, and Transformer of all things; such is the Great One, Brahm."

The character and power of Kneph are indicated in terms no less lofty and comprehensive than those applied to the omnipotent Brahm. He is described in the ancient Hermetic books as the "first G.o.d, immovable in the solitude of his Unity, the fountain of all things, the root of all primary, intelligible, existing forms, the G.o.d of G.o.ds, before the etherial and empyrean G.o.ds and the celestial."

In America this great Unity, this G.o.d of G.o.ds, was equally recognised. In Mexico as Teotl, "he who is all in himself" (Tloque Nahuaque); in Peru as Varicocha, the "Soul of the Universe"; in Central America and Yucatan as Stunah Ku or Hunab Ku, "G.o.d of G.o.ds, the incorporeal origin of all things." And as the Supreme Brahm of the Hindus, "whose name was unutterable," was wors.h.i.+pped under no external form and had neither temples nor altars erected to him, so the Supreme Teotl and the corresponding Varicocha and Hunab Ku, "whose names," says the Spanish conquerors, "were spoken only with extreme dread," were without an image or an outward form of wors.h.i.+p for the reason, according to the same authorities, that each was regarded as the Invisible and Unknown G.o.d.

The Mundane Egg, received as a symbol of original, pa.s.sive, unorganized, formless nature, became a.s.sociated, in conformity with primitive notions, with other symbols referring to the creative force or vitalizing influence. Thus in the Hindu cosmogany Brahma is represented, after long inertia, as arranging the pa.s.sive elements, "creating the world and all visible things." Under the form of the emblematic bull the generative energy was represented breaking the quiescent egg. Encircled by the folds of the agatho-demon, a type of the active principle, it was suspended aloft at the temples of Tyre. For the serpent, like the bull, was an emblem of the sun or of the attributes of that luminary--itself the celestial emblem of the "Universal Father," the procreative power of nature. "Everywhere," says Faber, "we find the great father exhibiting himself in the form of a serpent, and everywhere we find the serpent invested with the attributes of the Great Father and partaking of the honours which were paid him."[8]

Under this view, therefore, we may regard the compound symbol of the serpent and the egg, though specifically allusive to the general creation, as an ill.u.s.tration of the doctrine of the reciprocal principles which, as we have already seen, enters largely into the entire fabric of primitive philosophy and mythology.

Thus have we shewn that the grand conception of a Supreme Unity and the doctrine of the reciprocal principles existed in America in a well defined and easily recognised form.

Our present inquiry relates to the symbols by which they were represented in both continents. That these were not usually arbitrary, but resulted from a.s.sociations, generally of an obvious kind, will be readily admitted.

CHAPTER V.

_The Sun and Fire as emblems--The Serpent and the Sun--Taut and the Serpent--Horapollo and the Serpent symbol--Sanchoniathon and the Serpent--Ancient Mysteries of Osiris, &c.--Rationale of the connection of Solar, Phallic, and Serpent Wors.h.i.+p--The Aztec Pantheon--Mexican G.o.ds--The Snake in Mexican Mythology--The Great Father and Mother--Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent--Researches of Stephens and Catherwood--Discoveries of Mr. Stephens._

That fire should be taken to be the physical, of what the sun is the celestial emblem, is sufficiently apparent; we can readily understand also how the bull, the goat, or ram, the phallus, and other symbols should have the same import; also how naturally and almost inevitably and universally the sun came to symbolize the active principle, the vivifying power, and how obviously the egg symbolized the pa.s.sive elements of nature, but how the serpent came to possess, as a symbol, a like significance with these is not so obvious. That it did so, however, cannot be doubted, and the proofs will appear as we proceed; likewise that it sometimes symbolized the great hermaphrodite first principle, the Supreme Unity of the Greeks and Egyptians.

Although generally, it did not always symbolize the sun, or the power of which the sun is an emblem; but, invested with various meanings, it entered widely into the primitive mythologies. It typified wisdom, power, duration, the good and evil principles, life, reproduction--in short, in Egypt, Syria, Greece, India, China, Scandinavia, America, everywhere in the globe it has been a prominent emblem. In the somewhat poetical language of a learned author, "It entered into the mythology of every nation, consecrated almost every temple, symbolized almost every deity, was imagined in the heavens, stamped on the earth, and ruled in the realms of everlasting sorrow." Its general acceptance seems to have been remarked at a very early period. It arrested the attention of the ancient sages, who a.s.signed a variety of reasons for its adoption, founded upon the natural history of the reptile. Among these speculations, none are more curious than those preserved by Sanchoniathon, who says:--"Taut first attributed something of the Divine nature to the Serpent, in which he was followed by the Phoenicians and Egyptians. For this animal was esteemed by him to be the most inspirited of all reptiles, and of a fiery nature, inasmuch as it exhibits an incredible celerity, moving by its spirit, without hands or feet, or any of the external members by which the other animals effect their motion; and, in its progress, it a.s.sumes a variety of forms, moving in a spiral course, and darting forward with whatever degree of swiftness it pleases."

It is, moreover, long lived, and has the quality not only of putting off its old age, and a.s.suming a second youth, but of receiving at the same time an augmentation of its size and strength; and when it has filled the appointed measure of its existence, it consumes itself, as Taut has laid down in the Sacred Books, upon which account this animal is received into the sacred rites and mysteries.

Horapollo, referring to the serpent symbol, says of it:--"When the Egyptians would represent the Universe they delineate a serpent bespeckled with variegated scales, devouring its own tail, the scales intimating the stars in the Universe. The animal is extremely heavy, as is the earth, and extremely slippery like the water, moreover, it every year puts off its old age with its skin, as in the Universe the annual period effects a corresponding change and becomes renovated, and the making use of its own body for food implies that all things whatever, which are generated by divine providence in the world, undergo a corruption into them again."

Nothing is more certain than that the serpent at a very remote period was regarded with high veneration as the most mysterious of living creatures.

Its habits were imperfectly understood, and it was invested, as we perceive from the above quotations, with the most extraordinary qualities.

Alike the object of fear, admiration, and wonder, it is not surprising that it became early connected with man's superst.i.tions, but how it obtained so general a predominance it is difficult to understand.

Perhaps there is no circ.u.mstance in the natural history of the serpent more striking than that alluded to by Sanchoniathon, viz.: the annual sloughing of its skin, or supposed rejuvenation.

"As an old serpent casts his sealy vest, Wreaths in the sun, in youthful glory dressed, So when Alcides' mortal mould resign'd, His better part enlarged, and grew refin'd."--OVID.

It was probably this which connected it with the idea of an eternal succession of forms, constant reproduction and dissolution, a process which was supposed by the ancients to have been for ever going on in nature. This doctrine is ill.u.s.trated in the notion of a succession of Ages which prevailed among the Greeks, corresponding to the Yugs of the Hindus, and Suns of the aboriginal Mexicans. It is further ill.u.s.trated by the annual dissolution and renovation exhibited, in the succession of the seasons, and which was supposed to result from the augmentation and decline of the active principle, the Sun.

The mysteries of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, in Egypt; Atys and Cybele, in Phrygia; Ceres and Proserpine, at Eleusis; of Venus and Adonis in Phoenicia; of Bona Dea, and Priapus, in Rome, are all susceptible of one explanation. They all set forth and ill.u.s.trated, by solemn and impressive rites and mystical symbols, the grand phenomena of nature, especially as connected with the creation of things and the perpetuation of life. In all, it is worthy of remark, the serpent was more or less conspicuously introduced, always as symbolical of the invigorating or active energy of nature. In the mysteries of Ceres and Proserpine, the grand secret communicated to the initiated was thus enigmatically expressed: _Taurus Draconem genuit, et Taurum Draco_; "The bull has begotten a serpent, and the serpent a bull." The bull, as already seen, was a prominent emblem of generative force, the Bacchus Zagreus, or Tauriformis.

The doctrine of an unending succession of forms was not remotely connected with that of regeneration, or new birth, which was part of the phallic system, and which was recognised in a form more or less distinct in nearly all the primitive religions. In Hindustan, this doctrine is still enforced in the most unequivocal manner, through the medium of rites of portentous solemnity and significance to the devotees of the Hindu religion. "For the purpose of regeneration," says Wilford, "it is directed to make an image of pure gold of the female powers of nature in the shape of either a woman or a cow. In this statue the person to be regenerated is enclosed, and afterwards dragged out through the usual channel. As a statue of pure gold, and of proper dimensions would be too expensive, it is sufficient to make an image of the sacred Yoni, through which the person to be regenerated is to pa.s.s."

We have seen the serpent as a symbol of productive energy a.s.sociated with the egg as a symbol of the pa.s.sive elements of nature. The egg does not, however, appear except in the earlier cosmogonies. "As the male serpent,"

says Faber, "was employed to symbolize the Great Father, so the female serpent was equally used to typify the Great Mother. Such a mode of representation may be proved by express testimony, and is wholly agreeable to the a.n.a.logy of the entire system of Gentile mythology. In the same manner that the two great parents were wors.h.i.+pped under the hieroglyphics of a bull and cow, a lion and lioness, &c., so they were adored under the cognate figures of a male and female serpent."